How Jesus Became a Stranger in His Own House

That unmarried and childless rabbi. That guy who came into the temple swinging, who tore up temple furniture and turned the tables on leaders who build salvation businesses.

That revolutionary who would only be caught dead with the people his followers clamor to take pictures with. “Say cheese?”

That convict, that jailbird, that receiver of capital punishment. You might not recognize him when you see him.

Ah, I can see his face, but I can’t recall his name. Because the North American church is so close to the empire that it is hard for me to picture him.

“Caesar, may I?” So many of Jesus’ disciples move in lock-step with white-body supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy.

The North American church only moves in the direction of its political leaders—left or right—rather than taking the narrow way. Maybe this is why we can’t separate the church from the state, evident in the rise of white Christian nationalism with a new face and a presidential seal of approval.

But what’s his face was not a celebrity—that came after his death, not later in life. His disciples did not double as security guards (Well, except for Peter, who carried a knife), and the crowds were quick to turn on him. They came for the healings and stayed for the crucifixion.

They didn’t want his autograph either. Even his own disciples acted like they didn’t know him in the end. Only in death will Judas spill his guts over it.

Besides, getting closer to Jesus is not as easy as taking the “Roman Road” (Romans 3:23; 6:23; 10:9). That “right hand of fellowship” doesn’t really make it official either, does it?

From the looks of things, we still have a long way to go. Further still, Jesus’ disciples have lost their way when they aim only to stand in a pulpit rather than get ahead of the social issues of our day.

The late Eugene Peterson offered what could be a simple job description for any would-be pastor in his book, “Under the Predictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness.” He surmised, “We must do only what we are there to do: pronounce the Name, name the hunger.”

Instead, some of us name churches after our theological differences and our attempts at being right: First Baptist, Second Baptist, Third Baptist Church. Hungering for power and wealth, but what about Jesus? Because it’s clear that so much of what American followers do is not about Jesus.

Consequently, a growing number of Christians are looking at the North American church’s witness and saying, “There has to be more to it than this.” They are comparing the institution’s behavior with its confessions and beliefs.

Walter Brueggemann provides more than a fix for this performative religion but names the work in “The Prophetic Imagination,” writing: “We need to ask not whether it is realistic or practical or viable but whether it is imaginable. We need to ask if our consciousness and imagination have been so assaulted and co-opted by the royal consciousness that we have been robbed of the courage or power to think an alternative thought.”

What’s your answer? Because his words should get us all thinking.

Because this is what happens when a country is founded on oppression, when its beginning is an act of aggression, when its citizens believe and behave as if the genocide of the indigenous people is simply to be expected. While this may be “the way of the world,” it is not the way of Jesus, and we can’t simply push past that.

Still, a capitalist system off balance keeps pushing people around so the rich can “break new ground.” It just keeps pushing people down so they can cover new ground.

It keeps pushing people out because white-body supremacy is territorial. “No Negroes, no Jews, no Dogs.”
James Baldwin said rightly in a 1969 article titled “The Price May Be Too High” in The New York Times: “I will flatly say that the bulk of this country’s white population impresses me, and has so impressed me for a very long time, as being beyond any conceivable hope of moral rehabilitation. They have been white, if I may so put it, too long.” Robert P. Jones agreed and titled his book “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.”

In cahoots and complicit, too afraid to call it like we see it, the North American church doesn’t have an ecclesiological leg to stand on. On shaky ground, it doesn’t have a lengthy history of standing up for the oppressed, the marginalized or the otherized.

So, don’t ask them, “What would Jesus do?” At this point, he’s a complete stranger and thus a threat.